Eagerness to Scorn Earns Firm Reproof

Eagerness to Scorn Earns Firm Reproof

Article excerpt

THE DEATH OF ADAM: ESSAYS ON MODERN THOUGHT By Marilynne Robinson
Houghton Mifflin 254 pp., $24 This splendidly provocative set of
essays might, with equal justice, have been given the subtitle
"Against Shallowness." What animates Marilynne Robinson's spirited
campaign to enrich our current discourse on politics, religion, and
society is her dismay at the glibness, vacuity, and cheap cynicism
that have come to characterize too many of our discussions and
debates. A major part of this problem, she feels, is our dismissive
attitude toward history and the past. When it comes to our attitude
toward national heroes such as Lincoln and Jefferson, she wittily
remarks, "ill-informed condescension" has replaced "traditional ill-
informed respect." Robinson's expressed goal is to discover other
and better ways of thinking about the issues that most concern us as
a society. The topics she discusses include everything from the
legacy of the Puritans and the influence of social Darwinism to the
worship of the marketplace and its harmful effects on the
institution
of the family. Crucial, perhaps even central, to her enterprise is
her heroic effort to challenge the widespread prejudice against John
Calvin and Calvinism. Our general attitude toward the Puritans,
Robinson argues, "is a great example of our collective eagerness to
disparage without knowledge or information about the thing
disparaged, when the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude
one knows is socially approved. And it demonstrates how effectively
such consensus can close off a subject from inquiry." Robinson
castigates intellectual dishonesty and moral shoddiness across the
full range of the political spectrum. This is one of the reasons her
essays are so stimulating and her insights so refreshingly
unexpected. Indeed, reading this book certainly changed - or, at
very least, challenged - some of my own preconceptions. Although
I've always had a sneaking fondness for the Puritans, I had never
thought to question the assumption that their Calvinist theology
inclined them to be somewhat rigid, intolerant, parsimonious, and
uncharitable. Robinson traces the roots of these misconceptions to
the influential works of the Roman Catholic historian Lord Acton and
the German sociologist Max Weber. Boldly disputing them both,
Robinson goes directly to the actual writings of John Calvin and
other Calvinist divines, like New England preacher Jonathan Edwards.
What she finds are repeated, insistent injunctions to practice
charity, not only toward the "deserving" poor, but to all who are in
need. …